JC is currently having to upgrade his machine as the mobo has died. I thought i would link you the build that I have put together as potential upgrade in January, which has the same Mobo, GFX Card & CPU as what JC has selected for his build.

TBO yeah there is hardly any difference between the 4690k (released back in April 2014) and the Skylake 6600k (released recently in july).

If absolute raw dollars right now is the only thing that matters to you, get the 4690k. You will probably need to buy a new motherboard the next time you upgrade, though, so if you need to buy a new motherboard anyway (setting up a new PC from scratch, or your mobo doesn't have all the features you want, whatever), then you're better off with the 6600k. Nearly the same price, probably slightly better performance, and the motherboard you get will be upgradeable for years.

Both good builds with the last gen i7 giving a decent increase in performance but at a high price.I then thought i'd research my current cpu and overclock it seeing as if it melts, it wouldn't be the end of the world buying a new one anyway. Well (which i kind of knew anyways and the reason i was reluctant to upgrade until now) the 2500k overclocked at 4.5ghz is still an insanely powerful CPU and recon it would be better than a 6600 (non-K). This means i could just purchase the 970 G1 @ £280ish saving myself at least £300. I think it could last another 1/2 years.

What do you guys think, what would you do? I know your upgrading soon Monk will be interesting to see if you have any builds in mind so far.

Hah, you have convinced me to OC my CPU once again (It was running just at turbo and not manual).

Yeah, im completely unsure if I really want to upgrade my PC at the moment as as you say I dont see much difference between our OC CPU and the current ones.

My GPU at the moment is the 760GTX which is still ok but I think im going to try and OC this today aswell. I'm in no rush and as the next line of GPU that is coming out will be far superior over the 900 series due to new fabrication (16nm I believe over the current 28nm) and the new HBM2 which will be like going from 32bit to 64bit for graphic memory doubling the bandwidth. This means double the speed or twice as cheap, so Ive been reading.

– PC graphics finally moves away from ancient 28nm transistors in 2016– HBM2 memory will give an insane 1TB/s of bandwidth and support 32GB of graphics memory– Overall upshot could be a near doubling of gaming graphics performance…– …or today’s performance at roughly half the cost

But if you still have a 560 then I think its about time you upgraded that, heh!

I'm also wait for some newer motherboard to pop out as some of the motherboard at the moment have the new 10Gb/s Sata Express ports on the which take up atleast 3 6Gb/s Sata ports but no one ever made a SSD to support. I'm looking for motherboards to include more of the ultra M.2 or the U.2 ports, instead of just 1 of either.

Yeah i've still got the 560ti at the moment. I've had it for 4 and a half years so defo time for an upgrade i think...i can't wait any longer i don't think and the amount of games that i would like to play on max settings is already mounting up...not to forget the division in 3 months.

I've never actually OC'd anything before but was watching a youtube video which explained how to do it manually....have you got an Asus motherboard?

How did you get on with Overclocking your GPU?

THe advances on graphics cards over this year sounds interesting though, will keep an eye on that. I think i changed my mind god know how many times on the mobo as there are just so many different ones with different features...i think the last one i picked would have been the one i went for.

Its definitely time to upgrade your GPU but I think £277 is a bit much for the 970.

Having a look around and there is a new ASUS 970 OC coming out for only 229.16 (£234.65 with delivery), or a ZOTAC GTX 970 for £239.99 free delivery, but you might have your reasons for Gigabyte, I know I use to love them but think its all a bit samey now-a-days.

Capt Birdshit wrote:have you got an Asus motherboard?

Yes, I've got the P8P67-M Pro (mATX). Great little overclocker but with some missing features off the full Pro but there is a really good guide I found for my board which has helped me get it so far today to 4.2Ghz still testing at the mo (I also repositioned my fans and rad as it was not cooling enough, going great now thou).

I must admin £277 is expensive but i've never had any problems with Gigabyte cards in the past - thats also the G1 version i was looking at so will have to look to see how much of a difference there is between the G1 version and non G1.

I've got the P8P67-M Pro too - bios is really simple but will attempt it myself in the next few days i think and see how it does. Got a corsair H60 so should be more than enough to keep it cool. I was thinking of overclocking it to 4.4Ghz but may do it gradually.